{"id":5758,"date":"2014-09-01T00:04:35","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T07:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=5758"},"modified":"2014-09-01T00:04:35","modified_gmt":"2014-09-01T07:04:35","slug":"careful-eating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2014\/09\/01\/careful-eating\/","title":{"rendered":"Careful Eating"},"content":{"rendered":"

God spoke to Moses and Aaron: \u201cSpeak to the People of Israel. Tell them, Of all the animals on Earth, these are the animals that you may eat:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou may eat any animal that has a split hoof, divided in two, and that chews the cud, but not an animal that only chews the cud or only has a split hoof. For instance, the camel chews the cud but doesn\u2019t have a split hoof, so it\u2019s unclean. The rock badger chews the cud but doesn\u2019t have a split hoof and so it\u2019s unclean. The rabbit chews the cud but doesn\u2019t have a split hoof so is unclean. The pig has a split hoof, divided in two, but doesn\u2019t chew the cud and so is unclean. You may not eat their meat nor touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmong the creatures that live in the water of the seas and streams, you may eat any that have fins and scales. But anything that doesn\u2019t have fins and scales, whether in seas or streams, whether small creatures in the shallows or huge creatures in the deeps, you are to detest. Yes, detest them. Don\u2019t eat their meat; detest their carcasses. Anything living in the water that doesn\u2019t have fins and scales is detestable to you.\u201d (Leviticus 11:1-12)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You are what you eat. God loved his people, and so his purpose in giving them the dietary restrictions was not to make their lives less fulfilled or more difficult than they otherwise might be. Yet, when we get to the New Testament, those dietary restrictions were not imposed on the non-Jewish people who were coming to Jesus. So if there were some health benefits or protections associated with the food restrictions and if that had been their purpose, then freeing the Gentiles from the restrictions might be taken to mean that God didn\u2019t love Gentiles as much as he loved the Jewish people. So health probably has nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n

Why then were the Israelites allowed to eat some animals but not others? Why such detailed specifics and lists regarding so many different sorts of creatures? God\u2019s purpose was relational. The two major sections of the Pentateuch that elaborate the dietary restrictions are introduced or concluded with the statement that Israel was to be a \u201choly people of God\u201d and that they were to \u201cbe holy because God was holy.\u201d They were not to render themselves unclean by what they ate.<\/p>\n

Just as the prophets of God had to act out their prophetic messages\u2014as when Hosea married a prostitute, Ezekiel cooked bad bread over cow dung, or Isaiah ran about naked\u2014so the people of Israel illustrated to themselves and to their neighbors their relationship with God. God had told them that every aspect of their lives should be in the presence of God: when they got up, when they went to sleep, when they walked along the road and went about their day, God was always to be with them. Even in what they ate, they couldn\u2019t get away from God\u2019s presence in their lives. There was never supposed to be a moment when they didn\u2019t feel God\u2019s presence. After Pentecost, however, God began living inside his people. The external reminders of God were therefore no longer necessary. God is always with us now.<\/p>\n

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God spoke to Moses and Aaron: \u201cSpeak to the People of Israel. Tell them, Of all the animals on Earth, these are the animals that you may eat: \u201cYou may eat any animal that has a split hoof, divided in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5760,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5758\/revisions\/5760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}